3 Ways to Protect Your Marriage
I have had a number of jobs in my lifetime since my very first job at age 16, including working in customer service for a local internet company. Part of my training for this job focused on customer retention. My brain seems to have a built-in radar that is always scanning for how things connect or apply to relationships, and some of the principles I learned through this training caught my attention. There is wisdom hidden in these principles that we can apply to our marriages.
As a customer service representative, I was trained to do do 3 things to improve customer retention:
Understand the common reasons for leaving
Invite customers to share their reasons for leaving
Share what I will do for them to address these concerns
I talk a lot about resilience and connection as an overarching goal for couples; to stay together, and to love being together. I talk about why this even matters in other content, but today we’re talking about the what and the how.
In the context of marriage, customer retention is a reference to resilience. Staying together. Goodness knows there are plenty of things that threaten this. We don’t have to research the current statistics to have a pretty good idea of what percentage of marriages do not survive in our present time. We live it everyday. We see it happening all around us. With all we have going against us, what can we do to protect our marriages?
Here are 3 ways, courtesy of my customer service training:
Understand why people leave
Invite your spouse to share their concerns
Make a commitment and share with your spouse how you plan to address these concerns
Understand why people leave
There are many reasons people walk away from their marriages, but most of them can be summed up by the 4 main reasons that I learned in customer service.
Here’s a summary of why customers leave their service provider:
The cost is too high
There are better offers elsewhere
The service is low-quality or it doesn’t work right
They are moving away
Let’s think about what each of these things look like in a marriage.
The cost is too high
This one hits pretty hard. Marriage takes sacrifice, compromise, and growth. We know it costs us. Sometimes it costs us the way we’d prefer to do things and the things we want. When those are things like the way we load the dishwasher, the movie we decide to watch, the restaurant we go to for date night, or the type of vacation we take, the cost may seem manageable. But what if a husband starts to feel that his marriage is costing him big things like his autonomy, his freedom of choice, his sense of adventure, or his opportunity? What happens when a wife starts to feel that her marriage is costing her things like her sense of self, her emotional health, or her family relationships?
When marriage starts to conflict with the things we value most, we might start to believe that the cost is just too high to be worth it anymore.
There are better offers elsewhere
When we’re talking about internet service, the better offer is usually lower cost or higher quality. In a marriage, when this “better offer” meets up with a pre-existing sense that the current cost is too high, it creates a dangerous combination. If we start to feel like the toll our current marriage is taking on us is getting higher, and we see an opportunity that appears to promise a lower personal cost and a better product, it may start to look pretty appealing. We see this happen in customer service with customer churn. We see it happen in marriages with affairs, leaving for “the idea of someone else,” or the pull of the “freedom” of single life.
The service is low quality or doesn’t work right
If reason number one for leaving is about the negative impact of the marriage, this one gets at the source of it. Something isn’t working right. Something is wrong. Something isn’t the way we want it to be. We’re trying to connect with our spouse but it’s just not happening. We’re trying to prioritize sexual intimacy, but neither of us can seem to find the motivation or desire. We’re in a conflict cycle of resentment, defensiveness, and self-protection. We seem to fight constantly. We can’t agree on money. We feel consistently belittled, rejected, or neglected. Things just feel off or out of sync.
In customer service, I saw customers bail in two different ways. Rarely, I’d see a customer disconnect their service after having issues over a long period of time that we tried to address on multiple occasions. Whether it was our issue or not, they felt that it never really got figured out, got tired of trying, and moved on to something else. More commonly, I’d see a customer disconnect service complaining that it never worked. I’d look at their order history and see that they never once called in about it and we had not even been aware that there were any issues.
These two stories can manifest similarly with couples. A spouse gives up after a long period of time without having ever spoken up or attempted to work on it together. Or, they’ve attempted, and maybe they’ve even both tried, but it just doesn’t seem to be getting better. And eventually they reach the point where it bleeds into reason #1…it seems like things will never change, and the cost is just too high for something that isn’t working.
They’re moving away
The majority of customer churn in the company I worked for was due to customers moving out of our service area. There was nothing wrong with the service, they just didn’t have access it anymore because of their location.
In a marriage, this takes shape in a more figurative sense. It’s the “we just grew apart” conversation. Things grew stale. We lost touch. We’re not going in the same direction. We want different things. We realized we’re just not the right fit. We fell out of love. There’s nothing wrong, it’s just not right anymore.
Share Your Concerns and Follow Through
So how can understanding these reasons for leaving help us protect our marriages?
By going back to the 3 ways I was trained to improve customer retention:
After understanding some of these common reasons, take time to understand what is going on in your marriage, make a safe place for your spouse to share, and commit together to addressing whatever surfaces.
Here are some practical steps to take:
When the cost is too high - identify what each of your values are and what seems to be conflicting. Hold your values in one hand and your commitment to your marriage covenant in the other, and work together to get them into alignment. Maintaining one of them at the expense of the other is not sustainable.
When there are better offers elsewhere - work to develop “brand loyalty” with one another. This is a mindset of trust, commitment, and unconditional love. It sounds like this: “I am loyal to this person. When they mess up, I stick with them. I am more loyal to this person and this marriage than I am to my personal satisfaction.”
A lot of our customers at the internet company stayed loyal over decades, despite there being other options with lower prices. Why? Because we were good neighbors. Because we invested back into our community. Because we were there when they needed something. Because we always did everything we could to make things right when there were issues. Because we were local. When there are “better offers,” stick with your spouse because they are yours. And be the kind of person who inspires loyalty, because you are available when your spouse needs you, they know you care, you invest in them, and you do what it takes to make things right.
When the service is low-quality or doesn’t work - Be somebody your spouse can share with. Be receptive and respond with love and humility. Be a person of action. If your spouse brings something up to you, take the time to understand what they need and do something about it.
Take an honest look at your own heart and mindset and evaluate if you relate to any of these “reasons for leaving”. If you do and have not shared that with your spouse, discern a wise time and place to share honestly. Don’t wait until you’re ready to give up.
When you’re drifting or moving away - awareness is key. Create a regular time and place to check up on your marriage so that you know early when one of these things starts to creep in or you start to drift apart. Recognize passivity, apathy, and disengagement as enemies. While not as violent as explosive fights, betrayal, or dishonesty, they can be just as serious of a threat to the health and longevity of your relationship. They can be a reasons for leaving. Take the time to understand what is concerning your spouse, let them know what you’ll do about it, and then follow through.
Think about it:
How in tune are you with the following things (they’re all important)?
Your perception of the state of your marriage
Your spouse’s perception of the state of your marriage
The actual state of your marriage
Do it:
Start a conversation with your spouse about establishing a way that works for the two of you to regularly check up on your marriage.
This means building a time and space for both of you to share and listen openly to how each of you feel about the major areas of your relationship and your marriage overall.
Awareness of common threats will help you prepare for what could harm your marriage. But being in tune with your spouse and the culture and condition of your marriage will help you do what it takes to keep it healthy and strong over your lifetime together. It’s a worthy and loving pursuit - courage and strength to you both as you fight for each other and defend your holy covenant.
